I was studying to do military software at university, and the amount of deliberate inefficiency is insane. I worked on reducing software bugs and increasing quality, but the more bugs delivered the more money is made so such improvements were actively resisted. Plus pay at Raytheon and Lockheed was really really bad so I went to Silicon Valley instead.
I actually do sell software to the military now so I do know what it’s like. Part of it is the customers fault, they make it so expensive to do business with them that you lose money in overhead if you’re not ripping them off somewhere else. I wish I could put a line item that shows them just how expensive their stupid paperwork is. But part of the reason the customer is like that is because they’re routinely getting ripped off. Maybe if people in the military were smarter they could figure things out but in my experience it seems that McNamara’s Project 100K never ended and the military serves as an alternate welfare program for people who would be unable to get a job anywhere else. I’m not even sure I’m mad about it, the US still loves war too much despite how ruinously expensive it is. I worry if it was cheaper the US would do even more of it. Unfortunately it’s becoming cheaper anyway with all this drone warfare so we still have that dystopia to look forward to.
I actually do sell software to the military now so I do know what it’s like. Part of it is the customers fault, they make it so expensive to do business with them that you lose money in overhead if you’re not ripping them off somewhere else. I wish I could put a line item that shows them just how expensive their stupid paperwork is. But part of the reason the customer is like that is because they’re routinely getting ripped off. Maybe if people in the military were smarter they could figure things out but in my experience it seems that McNamara’s Project 100K never ended and the military serves as an alternate welfare program for people who would be unable to get a job anywhere else. I’m not even sure I’m mad about it, the US still loves war too much despite how ruinously expensive it is. I worry if it was cheaper the US would do even more of it. Unfortunately it’s becoming cheaper anyway with all this drone warfare so we still have that dystopia to look forward to.